Sohail Ahmadi, who was being raised by a local Kabul taxi driver, will hopefully now travel to the US to live with his parents
An infant boy handed in desperation to a US soldier across an airport wall in the chaos of the American evacuation of Afghanistan has been found and reunited with his relatives.
The baby, Sohail Ahmadi, was just two months old when he went missing on 19 August as thousands of people rushed to leave Afghanistan as it fell to the Taliban.
Continue reading...Decision to close public hammams – most people’s only chance for a warm wash – sparks anger in light of country’s mounting crises
The Taliban sparked outrage this week by announcing that women in northern Afghanistan would no longer be allowed to use communal bathhouses.
The use of bathhouses, or hammams, is an ancient tradition that remains for many people the only chance for a warm wash during the country’s bitterly cold winters.
Continue reading...The former Afghan president Ashraf Ghani gave his first interview since fleeing Kabul when it fell to the Taliban in August. Ghani told the BBC he was pressured into fleeing Kabul by helicopter by his 'terrified' national security adviser and the commander of the collapsing presidential security detail.
'They said the PPS [presidential protection service] has collapsed, [and] if I take a stand they will all be killed,' Ghani said. 'He did not give me more than two minutes'
Continue reading...In first interview since fleeing Kabul in August, former president says US ‘erased’ Afghans in years of peace talks with militants
The former Afghan president Ashraf Ghani has broken his silence with his first interview since fleeing Kabul four months ago, in effect blaming the international community and in particular the Americans for the fall of the republic.
Ghani told the BBC he was rushed into fleeing Kabul on a helicopter by his “terrified” national security adviser, Hamdullah Mohib, and the commander of the collapsing presidential security detail.
Continue reading...Aid collapse after Taliban took control means just 2% of people have enough to eat, UN says
In his seven decades, Mehrajuddin has been a police commander, a fighter for the mujahideen, a district governor and a prosecutor, and even briefly worked in Europe. Until this year, he has never struggled to feed his family.
Now they have just one meal a day, hard discs of stale bread soaked in water until they soften to mush. “All the family are starving,” he says bluntly as he waits at a food distribution centre in Kabul for a handout of lentils, rice, flour and oil. “I even worry about dying, because if it happens tomorrow, how will my family pay for my funeral?”
Continue reading...Ex-PM warns poverty and starvation mean country is at risk of world’s biggest humanitarian crisis
The west is “sleepwalking into the biggest humanitarian crisis of our times” in Afghanistan, Gordon Brown has warned, as he called for a support package to save the country from economic and social collapse after the Taliban’s takeover.
Four months after the western-backed government was overthrown following a mass military withdrawal, the former UK prime minister said the case for action was not based only on morals but also “in our self-interest”.
Continue reading...Mudassar Kadir said ‘zero progress’ made since he and his family arrived at Dubai refugee centre
An Afghan former BBC journalist who managed to flee the Taliban has been stranded in a refugee camp for months because of delays to a resettlement scheme promised by the UK government.
Mudassar Kadir* is the only one of 14 former BBC employees to have escaped Afghanistan since the Taliban took over in August. The other 13 remain in hiding in fear of their lives.
Continue reading...Grant Bailey was working as security consultant in Kabul where he liaised with US state department
A British man is missing in Afghanistan after a report he has been detained by the Taliban. Grant Bailey was arrested in the Afghan capital, Kabul, where he has been working as a security consultant.
The arrest came during a Taliban security clampdown, according to the Daily Mirror.
Continue reading...Our 20 favourite pieces of the year
After growing up in a Zimbabwe convulsed by the legacy of colonialism, when I got to Oxford I realised how many British people still failed to see how empire had shaped lives like mine – as well as their own
Continue reading...Activists lament that a safe, legal way into Britain has closed with Brexit, when stranded children need it as much as ever
‘When I was a child in Afghanistan I loved to watch my uncle play chess. Now I have joined the local club here.” Samir is grinning as he talks about settling into life on England’s south coast. “I’m very happy here, just being with my family, going for walks to look at the Christmas lights. It’s really beautiful.”
After arriving in Greece alone two years ago, when he was just 16, and spending many months homeless and terrified in the port city of Patras, Samir recently made a journey that most refugees can only dream about. He said goodbye to the friends he had made in a camp for unaccompanied minors – other teenagers from Somalia, Iraq and Palestine – and travelled safely and legally to join his father and sister in the UK.
Continue reading...Crowds brave sub-zero temperatues after Taliban announces it will resume issuing travel documents
Hundreds of people have braved sub-zero temperatures in Afghanistan’s capital to queue outside the passport office, a day after the Taliban government announced it would resume issuing travel documents.
Many began their wait the previous night and most stood patiently in single file – some desperate to leave the country for medical treatment, others to escape the Islamists’ renewed rule. Tense Taliban personnel periodically charged crowds that formed at the front of the queue and at a nearby roadblock.
Continue reading...There is a ‘very small window of opportunity’ to intervene, say aid workers, as poverty, conflict, drought and a freeze in humanitarian funding bring Afghanistan to the brink
Leading UK charities have launched a joint winter appeal to save the lives of 8 million people at risk of starvation in Afghanistan, as aid workers in the country warn of a “small window of opportunity” to intervene.
A combination of conflict, economic collapse, drought and the Covid-19 pandemic has brought the country to a tipping point, according to the Disasters Emergency Committee (DEC), the umbrella group of 15 aid agencies behind the appeal.
Continue reading...We return to the story of a journalist forced to flee as Afghanistan fell to the Taliban in August. Unable to return home without putting at risk everyone she loves and hounded by threatening calls, she remains in hiding in the country four months on
I am an Afghan female journalist and I have been on the run for more than four months. I have lived in numerous safe houses and the homes of people who’ve offered me refuge. I am constantly moving to avoid being caught, from province to province, city to city.
The Taliban insurgents have been threatening to kill me and my colleagues for two years, for our reports exposing their crimes in our province. But when they seized control of our provincial capital, they started to hunt for those who had spoken out against them. I decided to escape, for my own and my family’s safety.
Continue reading...Health experts issue dire warning as staff go unpaid and medical facilities lack basic items to treat patients
Large parts of Afghanistan’s health system are on the brink of collapse because of western sanctions against the Taliban, international experts have warned, as the country faces outbreaks of disease and an escalating malnutrition crisis.
With the country experiencing a deepening humanitarian crisis since the Taliban’s seizure of power in August amid mounting levels of famine and economic collapse, many medical staff have not been paid for months and health facilities lack even the most basic items to treat patients.
Continue reading...MPs’ inquiry given further details of Britain’s mismanagement of Afghanistan exit with ‘people left to die at the hands of the Taliban’
Further evidence alleging that the government seriously mishandled the withdrawal from Afghanistan has been handed to a parliamentary inquiry examining the operation, the Observer has been told.
Details from several government departments and agencies are understood to back damning testimony from a Foreign Office whistleblower, who has claimed that bureaucratic chaos, ministerial intervention, and a lack of planning and resources led to “people being left to die at the hands of the Taliban”.
Continue reading...Staff employed to teach British values and the English language refused the right to come to the UK
Nearly 100 former British Council staff employed to teach British values and the English language remain in hiding in Afghanistan after having so far been refused the right to come to the UK by officials.
Their plight has been taken up by Joseph Seaton, the former British Council Afghanistan English manager, and its deputy director, who has written to the most relevant cabinet members in a bid to gain their support.
Continue reading...A whistleblower has accused the British government of abject failures in its efforts to manage the evacuation of people from Afghanistan as the Taliban took control in August. Emma Graham-Harrison returns to the country to find it facing a humanitarian crisis
When the Taliban entered Kabul in August and completed their takeover of Afghanistan, thousands of people scrambled for the last remaining flights out of the city’s airport. It was chaos that turned deadly: a bomb attack on the airport’s perimeter killed more than 70 people as they crowded the fences, desperate for a way out. Now testimony from a whistleblower who was working on the UK government’s response to the crisis paints a picture of a callous, complacent and incompetent Foreign Office.
It’s a picture that rings true for the Guardian’s senior foreign reporter Emma Graham-Harrison, who tells Michael Safi that while some of the staff in the Foreign Office acted heroically, the system as a whole had huge failings. The government has rejected the account of the whistleblower. A spokesperson said: “Regrettably we were not able to evacuate all those we wanted to, but … since the end of the operation we have helped more than 3,000 individuals leave Afghanistan.”
Continue reading...The head of the Foreign Office has been accused of covering up the prime minister’s involvement in the decision to evacuate pets from Kabul at a select committee hearing.
Labour MP Chris Bryant made the accusation to Sir Philip Barton and read out a leaked letter from Boris Johnson’s parliamentary private secretary which he said implied Johnson’s 'fingers' were 'all over' the controversial decision.
Barton did not accept the charge and, in a separate interview, Johnson dismissed the accusation that he was involved as 'complete nonsense'
Continue reading...Sir Philip Barton refused to say precisely when Raab had been on holiday in August
The head of the diplomatic service has admitted failing to show leadership after he began a three-week holiday two days before the Foreign Office internally accepted Kabul was about to fall to the Taliban.
Sir Philip Barton stayed on holiday until 28 August and during bruising evidence to the foreign affairs select committee, he admitted this was a mistake.
Continue reading...Chris Bryant reveals Pen Farthing was sent a letter from Boris Johnson’s PPS confirming evacuation
A leaked letter suggests Boris Johnson and the Foreign Office may have covered up the prime minister’s involvement in airlifting more than 150 dogs and cats from Afghanistan, a senior MP has said.
On Tuesday it emerged that the charity worker Pen Farthing received a letter from Johnson’s parliamentary secretary saying Farthing, his staff and the animals could be rescued from Kabul amid the Taliban takeover in August, when thousands of Afghans with UK connections were also trying to flee.
Continue reading...